Thursday, December 29, 2011

The day after Christmas I jumped over to Livonia to work on some music with my friend Aleise Barnett for her project Blood Brother/Sol Sister. My long-time love of basement studios in Livonia goes way back, so checking out Andy Elliott's spot felt like a homecoming, even though I'd never been there before. I've been working with Aleise since 2001 or 2002 when she sang a Saturday Looks Good To Me song in my basement. We did a bunch of shows and recordings for a while, but then we both moved away in 2006 and things got quiet on her end musically for a bit. This new resurgence of inspiration and songs was pretty stellar and with the help of Ian Fulcher on horns, Pat Elkins on vocals, Thom Elliott on drums and Josh Bertram hung over as hell kinda hangin around, ten songs were knocked out over the course of the day. They're all in their roughest form right now, but you can hear some here at Aleise's bandcamp and more will surely follow. If you live in the New York area, there will be some BB/SS shows in the coming months. All hiatuses must be destroyed!!!!!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Last week was one of the most full-of-things weeks I've had in years. Seriously a gig of some sort every night and not a lot of sleep in between. One of the highlights was getting to do two shows with Love Of Everything, my homies from Chicago. We had a sick Toledo one night/Detroit the next mini-tour, and it made me wish deeply I could have been out with them the entire time. I played shows with them first in 2003, and the band has morphed many times as our paths continually crossed since then. My friend Cole Rabenort came along with me to the Detroit gig and took the photos you see above. Note the beer-can Xmas tree in the Garden Bowl where we jammed.

This fall I've been getting back into playing some more stripped-down, bummed-out solo songs, and have been working on recording all the new ones. The extremely talented Brook Davis (who recorded the Billowing record last year, as well as some yet-to-be-released krautrock style sessions) has been meeting with me after hours and working deep into the night on these sessions, and we're moving on to mixing now. There's Brook above, making sure the microphone is placed juuuuusssttt so... The record doesn't have a title yet, but is going to be released sometime next year on NYC label Ernest Jenning Record Co.

Here is a rough mix of a song I recorded during these sessions. It's a cover of my bestie and sometimes bandmate Kelly Jean Caldwell's recent mega-weeper "Water Inside Water Outside". Her version is better, but this one has a vibe of some sort, too.